Global Border Deaths

Controlling border crossing has become a prime concern under conditions of late modernity, leading western governments to introduce increasingly coercive control measures, ranging from visa regimes to military fortification. Far from eradicating spontaneous border crossing, this ‘defensive geography’ has fuelled illicit people smuggling markets, and forced asylum seekers and illegalized travellers into increasingly hazardous journeys.

This project seeks to account for, rather than merely count, border-related deaths. It intends to shift the debate about contemporary border controls towards the acceptance of a more mobility-tolerant future.

Drawing on data from official sources, media reports and lists of deaths collated by non-governmental organisations in Europe, Australia and North America, this project draws direct parallels between border control policies adopted across the Global North, and a mounting death toll of illegalized border crossers.

It analyses the political and material conditions driving contemporary border control policies and discusses the processes which mediate popular and official understandings about border-related fatalities.

Controlling border crossing has become a prime concern under conditions of late modernity, leading western governments to introduce increasingly coercive control measures, ranging from visa regimes to military fortification.

In seeking to account for, rather than merely count, border-related deaths this project by Dr Leanne Weber and Professor Sharon Pickering intended to shift the debate about contemporary border controls towards the acceptance of a more mobility-tolerant future.

Although the project is complete, BOb continues to periodically update the The Australian Border Deaths Database as a way of maintaining a record of all known deaths associated with Australia’s borders.

The Last Rights Project will address legal gaps and failures and develop international best practice and procedure for working with dead, missing and bereaved refugees and migrants to ensure their rights are respected. This will take the form of an over-arching protocol setting out the relevant international law, followed by best practice/procedure guidance for all those working in the field.

Border Memories: 12 scholars from Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden explore the interplay of the past and the present in various borderzones characterized by migration.

Human Costs of Border Control: The Deaths at the Borders Database is the first collection of official, state-produced evidence on people who died while attempting to reach southern EU countries from the Balkans, the Middle East, and North & West Africa, and whose bodies were found in or brought to Europe. Hosted by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Migrant deaths in the Mediterranean Sea 2011: Complaint filed by survivors and NGO coalition holds French military responsible for deaths of 63 migrants traveling from Libya in March 2011. Click here to read the formal complaint [French only].